


surrounded

by orphan_account



Series: Post Sburb [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Post SBURB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:29:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1647035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The funny thing about Dirk, is that he’s almost obviously desperate, in ways Bro never was. When they’d actually met up in person, he was always hanging around. Around him, or Rose, or his friends. He’d go off on his own, sometimes, but when he was in a group, he was never content to just sit there and listen. Dave would be, but if Dirk was in a group, he’d always say something. Something clever, something rude, something just plain fucked up, but he’d be vying for attention, specifically Dave’s.</p>
<p>--------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>A little insight into how they got along, and get along, postgame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	surrounded

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't really fuck around with symbolism at all this time, I just really wanted to get down this idea of Dirk.

They haven’t spoken in a little while, not since the hug on the roof. They exchanged a few words, to pretend to clear up the heavy confusion that Dave certainly felt, and assumed Bro did too, but Dave’s retreated to his room again, and only comes out when he hears the door to the main room shut, and the tell-tale click of keys in the door. Did Bro always lock it before? Is this something he only just started to do? He’d never paid enough attention to that kind of shit.  
Most of the time is spent on the computer. He’ll draw comics, but they’re always lacking that shitty thirteen-year-old’s humor that he wanted. It’s not like they become a diary for his deepest of fucking traumas or anything. But they’re not the same. He thinks too much about them, as though he actually gives a shit. Is that too crude for SBaHJ humor, is it not fucking crude enough? Is the ass too bulbous? He ends up drawing Sweet Bro’s candy-red butt at least eight sizes too fucking huge, just to spite himself. He’s the maker of his own damn comic, and he can draw it how he chooses.  
He just doesn’t actually ever end up drawing anything that he does something with.  
He’ll talk with Rose, mostly. Her mother is back, and their relationship is basically as stilted as Dave’s own. John’s Dad is back, and they clicked back together like magnets. The unconditional bond of a father-son relationship, unfettered with the bullshit of Dave’s own, or Rose’s paranoid childhood delusions. Jade got Bec back, but doesn’t talk about him much. Her plants die a lot, she told him, it’s because she accidentally waters them too much.  
He tells her to take a fucking nap, and that jesus, she’s running herself into the ground. She typed some bright green laughter back. He didn’t meddle much more than that.

The apartment is silent around him, and Dave just sits there. The screen turns off, and he’s left in the pallid light that comes in through the window. He should rap. He should get up, and he should put his hands on that tiny little thing he was so proud of, so, so long ago, and he should make some shitty beats. He should go into the main room, and drop his mits right on Bro’s turntables, and claim survivor’s rights or something, when Bro walks back in and asks him just what the fuck he’s doing.  He should talk to Rose, try and get her to open up or something. Or make fun of John’s movies. He should do something. But he won’t touch Bro’s turntables, and he won’t ask Rose how she’s really, honestly fucking doing, and he can’t even begin to imagine what kind of shit John’s been binging on. He should probably talk to them more, instead of just sitting there, at the computer, mouse hovering over the name.  
Jesus, he’s never felt this shitty.  
Shouldn’t coming home have made him feel better or something? Shouldn’t having gotten his brother back made him feel like, secure or whatever? He didn’t really have these problems in the game—yeah. He had trouble sleeping. Got nightmares straight from the mouth of one of those eldritch horrorterror shitlings, and yet, he still felt better than he does now.  
The computer pops a note, and he doesn’t jump, but he’s surprised. The screen is all lit up, and sure enough, it’s from pesterchum. The yellow head is grinning up at him stupidly, and he clicks it. Surprisingly, the text isn’t purple, or even green or blue. It’s yellow-orange.  
  
TT: Hey.  
TT: Finally got the cross-dimensional pesterchum working. You wouldn’t believe the kind of work that had to be done to get this shit going.  
TT: Come on, man. Respond. Your handle is bright and active, and if we don’t get word from your universe, it’s a lost cause and we’ll probably have to start from fucking scratch again.

He pauses, looking at the screen, before he finally forces himself to put his fingers to the keyboard, curious despite himself. If he can get word from Dirk, he can probably get word from Terezi, or Karkat. Jade could probably talk to her teen-grandpa. 

TG: calm the fuck down man nobody can respond that quick  
TG: what if i was taking a piss or something  
TG: youd be left sitting at your computer waiting to hang off my every word while im taking my sweet time with the toilet  
TG: making sweet love to it via urine  
TT: Yeah, but you aren’t.  
TG: you didnt get those fucking viewport things open did you  
TG: the things the trolls had  
TT: No. Probably won’t, either. Frankly, not too keen to watch everything you do in your alternate universe version of my room.  
TG: bullshit youd love to get your creeper spy shit going on us over here on actual earth  
TT: Right. Point is, the conversation channel should be open for between our two universes.  
TT: Roxy says it might crash a lot, depending on how many of us are using it at once.  
TG: okay  
TG: so if its not up yet then how are you talking to me  
TT: It’s a test run, obviously. We decided to test out the system, and I contacted you first.

The funny thing about Dirk, is that he’s almost obviously desperate, in ways Bro never was. When they’d actually met up in person, he was always hanging around. Around him, or Rose, or his friends. He’d go off on his own, sometimes, but when he was in a group, he was never content to just sit there and listen. Dave would be, but if Dirk was in a group, he’d always say something. Something clever, something rude, something just plain fucked up, but he’d be vying for attention, specifically Dave’s.  
He didn’t need to pay as much attention as Rose would to notice that Dirk would stare at him pretty intensely, like he was trying to size Dave up. Figure out how he worked. Dirk would try, sometimes, to get them alone so they could talk about—something.  
Probably not anything Dave wanted any part of, so Dave would slip away, give him some kind of lame excuse and walk off to go do something, somewhere else, with someone else. It was just-it was too weird. He was Bro, but not. He spoke the same way, had a similarly shitty taste in clothes, and he liked a lot of the same things, but he wasn’t him. Bro wouldn’t trail around, as though he was trying to prove himself. Bro’d just fucking command that kind of attention. He wouldn’t wait around for things to fall into place for a conversation, he’d just make it happen. Dirk would wait, and Dave would slip away.

Despite Dirk’s reaction to him though, the kind of pining for attention that Dave used to do constantly around Bro, (all: “Hey, check out my sweet fort,” “listen to this piece of shit I made,” “look at this new comic, is this bullshit ironic or what?” ) Dirk is rude. So fucking rude, sometimes he’s more obnoxious than Dave’s actual Bro ever was, and it always catches him off guard. Dirk was kind of eager to follow him around, and try and form some kind of brotherly bond or something (which Dave really, really didn’t want to go for) , but at the same time, he didn’t really afford much leeway. If Dave fucked up on some fact unironically, without some kind of metaphor backing it, Dirk was quick to correct him and tell him what was what.  
He never really knows how to react, and didn’t really want to. He spent more of his time hanging around Karkat, Rose, or the others, although Dirk would catch up with him eventually. When she was sober, he and Rose hit it off pretty well. Karkat and him, less so.

TT: You’re still there, right?  
TG: yeah yeah hold your horses man  
TG: papshoosh them into complacency or something jesus theyre getting wild  
TG: those fuckers are gonna trash the barn before we can even finish this conversation  
TT: Alright, the horses are all wrestled back into their stalls.  
TG: right so did you build this alternate universe contact thing  
TG: you do robots and shit right  
TT: If you mean I build androids, rapping robots, and all fuckin’ sorts of tangible moving things that exist in the corporeal plane, then yeah. I do ‘robots and shit.’  
TT: But no, I didn’t build this. Roxy and one of the trolls did.  
TG: wait so why isnt she testing it out  
TG: are they all eagerly watching us chat or something  
TG: alright next time you cross a signal over the huge distance of our universes just gimme the heads up on this shit  
TT: No, nobody aside from myself and my auto responder is monitoring the conversation.  
TG: so hows this a test run if nobodies watching it are you gonna report back or something  
TT: Something like that.  
TT: So how is it over there? How’s Alt.U. me?  
TG: cool  
TG: speaking of him though i think hes calling for a strife or something peace out  
TG: good luck with your like   
TG: transdimensional chatroom shit

— turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering timaeustestified [TT] at 16:40 —

TT: Yeah, alright.  
TT: There’s no need to dick around, if you don’t want to talk, you can just say it.  
TT: Whatever, thanks for the well-wishes.

— timaeustestified [TT] is now an idle chum —

 

Dave stands up and away from the computer chair, gets up and paces. He drags his hands through his hair—he needs to take a shower— and then sits back down. Gets back up. From somewhere outside, a crow cackles. He paces once more around his room, smoothes his hair back down around his head, and leaves, heading into the main room. He opens the refrigerator, even though he knows that only an avalanche of swords will come out. He steps over the shitty, easily breakable weapons, and lets the door close shut, not even bothering to pick up the blades. He finds a bottle of apple juice in the dishwasher, with a new bag of ice.  
The plastic feels cold, and way too damp on his hands. And the papery label sticks to his skin. He slides up onto the counter, next to the sink, and sips at it.  
By the time the main door opens again, the swords are arranged into something like a pile, the apple juice bottle is sitting on the counter, empty and in plain sight, and Dave’s back in his room with the computer turned off.

**Author's Note:**

> Poor Dirk.
> 
> Poor Dave.
> 
> Poor everybody.
> 
> I kind of word-vomited, this isn't as good as it could be. Sorry about that. I also don't know how to do pesterlogs.


End file.
